Co-determination

Co-determination means participation and the opportunity to influence actual decisions that concern one’s own situation, for example that student representatives at a school help determine the students’ teaching situation, or that employee union representatives in a company participate in decision-making processes about the company’s future. 

In working life, we distinguish between co-determination and participation. By co-determination in working life, we mean the participation and influence of shop stewards in representative cooperative bodies at the workplace on behalf of the members of their trade unions. In working life, employees are most often represented by the trade unions and their representatives in decisions about workplace development and the organization of work. Salary and working conditions are negotiated between management in the business and the employees’ representatives in their respective trade unions. Co-determination is at the heart of representative democracy in the workplace. 

Participation denotes the individual’s influence on their own working situation and responsibility for the development in the workplace. Participation takes place in collaboration between the individual employee and immediate manager. This is called direct/individual democracy in the workplace. 

Co-determination means that more people participate in decision-making processes and can make them democratic. Co-determination is often exercised by shop stewards as representatives of a separate group in a movement, or an organisation. In school, shop stewards can represent all pupils’ interests in decisions concerning teaching, rules of order and social and cultural measures. The student council is a representative democratic body in each school. 

In working life, the concepts of co-determination and participation were defined and agreed upon as a right for trade unions and their members in the revision of the Main Agreement LO/NHO in 1966.